ARCADIA, Calif. - Awesome Gem made a meteoric rise from maiden winner in September to a Grade 2 stakes winner in January, and on Saturday he will be tested in the $300,000 Strub Stakes at Santa Anita.
Awesome Gem has won 3 of his last 4 starts, a streak that includes the Grade 2 San Fernando Breeders' Cup Stakes over 1 1/16 miles on Jan. 13. While the Strub is also a Grade 2, the race is run over 1o1/8 miles, which will equal the longest race of Awesome Gem's seven-race career.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Liquidity finished a game second in the Grade 1 Hollywood Futurity in December. It was the best race of his four-race career and will make Liquidity the favorite in Saturday's $100,000 Sham Stakes at Santa Anita, a race that has drawn several promising 3-year-olds trying to establish a presence in the division.
Liquidity, trained by Doug O'Neill for Paul Reddam, finished a neck behind Stormello in the Hollywood Futurity. Liquidity will be seeking his first stakes win in the Grade 3 Sham, which is run over 1 1/8 miles.
Wrenice has dominated the Texas Stallion Stakes series for her division since last year, and will attempt to take down a third win in the program on Feb. 17, when she starts in the $125,000 Two Altazano division - a mile race for 3-year-old fillies - at Sam Houston Race Park.
Wrenice won the 5 1/2-furlong division of the Stallion Stakes at Lone Star Park in July, and it was the start of a five-race win streak that ended Jan. 26 with her second-place finish in the $50,000 Genesis at Delta Downs.
Several roads are heavily traveled to the Kentucky Derby, but the one that meanders through Turfway Park can't honestly be counted among them.
Still, if there is a Turfway horse with viable credentials to eventually make it to the 133rd Derby, it is Joe Got Even, a colt who figures as the favorite when the track's first of three Derby preps, the $50,000 WEBN Stakes, is run at one mile Saturday in Florence, Ky.
Roaring Lion, who closed out his 2-year-old campaign by winning the Maryland Juvenile Championship, will go for his fourth straight victory when he makes his 3-year-old debut Saturday in the $90,000 Miracle Wood Stakes at Laurel Park.
He's not, however, the fastest horse in the field of five, which will be racing one mile.
That distinction belongs to Saratoga Lulaby, a John Rigattieri-trained colt who finished second to Roaring Lion in a first-level allowance on Dec. 20.
ALBANY, Calif. - Vaderator, the lone member of the five-horse field making his stakes debut, will be the one the other four in the field - all stakes winners - will be trying to catch in the $50,000 Fairfax on Saturday at Golden Gate Fields.
The speedball Vaderator drew the rail. He is looking for his third victory in his past four starts. He comes off a 10-length defeat as runner-up to Smokey Stover, who just defeated Bordonaro and Proud Tower Too in the Sunshine Millions Sprint and may be the best sprinter in the country.
PHOENIX - When he burst on the scene as a 2-year-old in Southern California back in 2004, Diligent Prospect looked like a potential player on the Derby trail. While injury took away much of his 2005 season, Diligent Prospect has managed to find his calling the past year: becoming a quality sprinter. He takes that reputation into Saturday's $45,000 G Malleah Handicap at Turf Paradise. The six-furlong event, which honors the world-record holder for the distance, lured a field of eight.
Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Ark., has canceled its Thursday through Sunday programs because of winter weather that has left the track unsuitable for racing, officials announced early Thursday.
Racing is scheduled to resume on Thursday, Feb. 8.
Sleet hit Hot Springs on Wednesday night, and temperatures were in the 20s on Thursday morning. Despite crews working the track round the clock, Oaklawn was unable to open for training Monday, Wednesday or Thursday.
BOYNTON BEACH, Fla. - Trainer Kiaran McLaughlin did not know what to expect when a bay colt arrived in his barn a little more than a year ago from Uruguay. The horse had won all his races, was training well, and his exercise rider kept coming back with good reviews. But a veterinarian from Chile happened by his barn one morning at Palm Meadows and threw ice water on his hopes.
"He might have been beating $10,000 claimers," McLaughlin remembers being told. "Good luck."
Rosie Napravnik, Maryland's leading rider last year, will miss eight to 12 weeks while recuperating from three compression fractures in her back.
Napravnik, who will turn 19 on Feb. 9, was injured when her mount, Look Out Lorie, fell after finishing second in last Friday's sixth race at Laurel Park.
The fractures are located in the middle of her back, described in medical terms as the thoracic region.
